Based on a Work by freelancer92. SPI Mark III Armor belongs to freelancer92, Havoc-Legionnare and the Weapon Consortium.
Chapter 7
1458 Hours, November 11, 2552(Military Calendar)/
Inside damaged covenant Battlecruiser, Central African Republic, Earth
"Explosives are set, find us a way out of here" Jason's COM crackled. It was not the voice of Achilles, but it was definitely from Phoenix Squad. Jason's team, Blue Griffin, the remaining faction of Griffin Squad, has been tasked to cause mayhem in the covenant headquarters in the Central African Republic so that Phoenix Squad could slip inside, and set explosives in the engineering room to blow it up.
His current squad leader, Corporal Randall said: "Jason, you pick the direction. We need to find the bay room."
"Affirmative" he replied, as he blasted the Brute behind him with an M90 Close Assault Shotgun. He pointed at one door. They all followed, with him in the front.
"So you really know where we are going?" One Spartan from his team asked.
"Yes. Just follow the bodies." They all chuckled a bit.
They arrived on the second tier, where they gained access to the drop ships. The hanged was a huge room, with three floors: the main floor held several doors leading to various parts of the ship, the second and third floor was a narrow strip of alloy, with doors at the beginning and end. It also did not have any walls that prevented anybody from firing from that location.
Someone asked: "You guys up there?" It was definitely not a Spartan from Griffin Squad.
Jason leaned over the edge of the second floor, and spotted Spartans in SPI armor, along with a group of Elites.
"Don't shoot them! They are on our side now. Long story short, they want revenge on the covenant. Also, I have to confirm that Achilles is dead."
"If these Spartans are as smart or resourceful as I am, then they will understand the situation" Walter thought.
"I think we understand the situation. We'll wait for you here, find a way -"
All doors leading to the room in the main floor opened, and covenant soldiers started pouring in. Walter aimed his Carbine and started firing. The rest of Phoenix squad, and the ex-covenant forces assisted him.
The covenant forces charged forward, firing their Carbines, Plasma Pistols and Spike Rifles.
There was no point in activating camouflage because all the covenant soldiers knew they were there.
Two brutes went down from the combined firepower of Walter's Carbine and Josh's Battle Rifle.
Kat killed three Jackals with her Sniper Rifle, but they kept coming, stepping over their fallen comrades.
A red dot appeared on one brute within the covenant forces. In three short seconds, the dot was replaced by a blood red laser. Once it connected with the brute, it reappeared as four blood-red beams, the exploded upon impact, killing the Brute and two Jackals. A Spartan from Team Griffin fired a Galilean Spartan Laser, and moved the weapon as soon as it fired; spreading the devastating laser shots.
Walter noticed one Brute headed towards his direction, with a shotgun at hand. It pumped a shell into the chamber and fired. Walter brought his Jackals Shield in front of him before the bullets made impact with his armor.
He dropped his Carbine, upholstered his Spike Rifle and shot the Brute in the unprotected section of his knee. The beast roared, and attempted to fire a second time, but was too slow.
The Spartan slammed his shield into the shotgun as he holstered his Spiker. He un-slung his shotgun from his back with his right hand, and fired.
Blood splattered in front of his arm shield, and he deactivated it.
"Can I really do this?" His idea was one that has not been attempted by anybody, except a comic book character called The Punisher.
Walter now had two shotguns at his disposal, one on each hand. He fired one 8-gauge blast at the closest brute. He tossed the same shotgun up, caught it in the pump handle, and pumped it before tossing it up and catching it again.
As a Spartan, the perfect weapon the UNSC has to offer, doing this should be a simple feat. He took notice that the shotgun seemed to move slowly when he tossed it up. "Spartan Time I guess." According to the Halo novels he has read, Spartan Time was a moment in which things seem to happen in slow motion; due to the increased neural reaction time a UNSC Spartan had.
Another shot blasted the head off the shoulders of a Jackal soldier. Without pumping his off-hand shotgun, he fired at another Brute with the shotgun on his right hand.
Another brute came, but Walter didn't have his shotguns ready to fire. Without another second to spare, Walter thrusted one shotgun on to the Brute's torso. The large alien didn't anticipate the move, and grabbed the shotgun, with his hands on the pump handle.
"Stupid."
Walter brought his shotgun back and forward quickly, pumping the gun, and then he fired. Organs flew off from the back of the Brute soldier.
Two more Brutes warriors charged forward. With no more ammo in the guns, Walter threw his shotguns at them, with the hopes of slowing them down. Suddenly, in front of the Spartan, an Elite in Jet blue armor charged forward, with a plasma sword in each hand.
It was the Elite SpecOps officer, Erbr Rawotee. He slashed the weapons the brutes were carrying in half with the blade on his left hand.
Whether the Brutes were stunned or not, no one would ever find out, due to the fact that in less then a second, the gorilla-like beasts were slain.
Walter spotted a strange purple machine on the ground.
"Looks like the same device that brute used earlier. It's a grav lift!" Walter thought. The grav lift was a short term used for gravity lift a device that propels a user upward, something the covenant would rather use than stairs.
The warrior ran, and squatted down to the floor to pick up the alien device. "Duck" someone yelled.
Walter obeyed, and later saw an energy sword swing over his head, slicing a Brute that stood near Walter.
"Deploy it. We can get to the second floor a lot faster that way" said the Elite Councilor, Jevosee.
"What do you think I was trying to do?" Walter sprinted, and kept running towards the location closest to Team Griffin, where he could deploy the gravity lift and get to the second floor.
He got there and immediately deployed the lift.
The purple device opened and emitted a blue light, followed by a gust of wind blowing towards the ceiling. Walter jumped over the device and was propelled upward. His feet touched the floor on the second tier.
An enemy Brute aimed a Rocket Launcher and fired at the device.
"Crap!"
A Spartan from Team Griffin tossed a bubble shield, and then a round layer of transparent pentagons blocked the incoming rocket from destroying the lift.
The Brute did not have a chance to fire a second rocket, because soon afterward, thirty Assault Rifle rounds penetrated its armor, body and flesh.
The humans were escaping, an unacceptable move. So far, attempts from the Huragok to disarm the explosives in engineering have proven futile, as the humans placed proximity mines they refer to as "Trip Mines" in almost every entrance.
Almost all of them were on board a U-shaped Spirit dropship. "No! They're escaping" Nartumas thought.
He ordered one of his troops to drop a lift. The purple device activated, and Nartumas was the first to use it.
He made it up, and then, a barrage of plasma bolts was headed to his direction. He slung his Carbine over his shoulder, and with all four limbs, made his way up to the Unggoy firing the plasma turret. He reached it, grabbed the small, frightened creature by its legs and proceeded to rip the creature apart in half by separating its legs.
Lucky for the simian-like alien, it never got to experience the painful death. A green, radioactive shot caught the unggoy in between its eyes.
Nartumas looked up, and spotted a Sangheili in jet blue armor.
"I wonder what the humans have offered you for your assistance."
"It's something I call REVENGE" spat Rawotee.
He hurled a fragmented grenade towards Nartumas. The Jiralhanae Captain smacked the grenade away from him with his own Carbine. It landed on the main floor and exploded.
The dropship lifted and started to fly away. Rawotee was nowhere in sight.
"Get to the Banshees! Pursue the dropship" Nartumas ordered his men.
It was a relief to Walter that part of the battle was over. Two elites piloted the aircraft. Three of the last four members of Team Griffin controlled the gun turrets.
Jason, a Spartan from Team Griffin yelled "Incoming Banshees!"
After two seconds, an elite said "Now human!"
Walter took out the detonators, and activated the explosives. Whether the whole ship exploded, or just the engineering room, Walter could not tell, all he was aware of was that the Covenant forces would need to find a new place to camp out at.
"Would I be safer if I decided not to be part of this war?"
He reflected back on his actions in the previous battle.
"If it were just I against one brute, would I have given him a painful death, or a quick death?"
Walter was unsure of what to think anymore. Part of him longed for him to make the Brutes suffer for just being... Blind. These creatures blindly follow their superior race, the Prophets, for their sense of honor and for their So-called Great Journey. They are blind in the sense that they believe that what they are doing is right, and that humanity has to suffer for their cause.
Another part of him resented that, and just wished for the brutes to die as painlessly as possible. They were lost children, didn't know any better. The best cure Walter could think of giving them was death.
"I was actually having fun back there!" He told himself. The joy of holding two shotguns, the joy of shooting a Brute in the knee, all those moments he killed, he reflected back on it, and enjoyed it.
"No, you will not enjoy killing. Walter this is only for self-defense, not for fun!"
Yet, Walter still felt happy of all the killing.
"Banshees neutralized" one of the Spartans said. "So Walter, how did Achilles die?" Josh asked. Walter stopped, he forgot about Achilles death. He replied "I was knocked out cold before he died."
"So you didn't exactly see him die, did you?"
"If the Jiralhanae spared Private Walter, then that means they had no use for the other. They must have disposed of him" Councilor Jevosee.
Whether he died or not, Walter no longer cared. There was no way Achilles could have survived the explosion.
"I should have died with you, yet I'm still alive" he thought, as though he was speaking with Achilles.
The Spartan scanned the room, and then he noticed only three members in his squad: Josh, Michael and Tamara.
How could he have overlooked this? One of his teammates died during that battle in the hangar bay. Her cause of death was not of importance to him; all he needed to know was that she died.
Walter could not hold back tears, because he produced none. "Cry dammit, you're a human!" He wanted to cry, but he felt nothing, as if his emotions no longer agreed with his thoughts. "You promised you will mourn for the dead. At least do it when you get back to the base."
UNSC pelicans closed in on the spirit dropship, but didn't bother to shoot: they were informed of its arrival.
Ten minutes later, Walter was in the medical room in the UNSC Field Headquarters in the Eastern African Protectorate. Walter was lying on his bed, with his helmet and the upper portion of his Semi-Powered Infiltration armor off.
"Hopefully negotiations between the ex-covenant forces and the UNSC will go as smoothly as mine." he told Josh.
"We all have a common goal, and those elites sure seemed willing to side with us. How easy was it for you to convince them?" He asked.
"We all have a common goal: defeat the covenant forces. I have to admit though, it was almost too easy. I smell a trap."
"Then why have them around?" Tamara asked.
"Use them the same way we would use poison. We don't have to like their company, but as long as they are a benefit to us all, then it's worth having them around. Besides, traitors betray themselves." Walter replied, thinking to himself the last part of his response.
A Spartan in green MJOLNIR armor walked into the Medical room. It was Spartan-IV-C045, Simmons. Simmons was the Company Captain of the C Company Spartans.
"Congratulations Son! For the success of your squad's mission, and the other beneficial outcome, you are hereby promoted to Corporal, Grade two. Phoenix squad is yours to command now."
"Giving me command will not lessen the blow the mission has dealt me. Besides, my teammates did most of the work while I got knocked out cold." Walter felt like saying those words. He wore his usual poker face as usual, trying to show no signs of emotion.
He replied: "Thank you sir."
"Now, I have some soldiers ready to tackle the covenant armada in your squad. You can find their names under your team roster in your HUD. Know them, love them, and make them effective in your team."
"Affirmative, I will not fail." Walter replied.
"That's what you wanted to hear, wasn't it? Can't ask for anything less can you?" the Spartan thought to himself.
"However," Simmons continued. "Your teammates Tamara and Michael are being transferred to another team." Walter gave no sign of surprises; he just stood still, waiting for the positive response.
"We want to try to make the best team combination possible, and I'm sure their skills will be put to better use elsewhere." Captain Simmons paused. With no response from Walter or any of the Spartans in the room, he continued.
"Now, your mission for now is to remain here at the base. You guys need rest, and besides, we could always use the extra hand." The Spartan Captain finished. "Attention!" Walter ordered. Phoenix Squad saluted, and then he left
When he left, Walter said "Alright guys, think you can meet me in about two hours, even if you are no longer part of my team; there are some things I want to go over, to increase our chances of survival against the covenant. We will have self-defense training and discuss battle tactics."
Michael replied "of course."
"In the mean time, relax and if possible, do some research on covenant anatomy."
"Elites included?" Josh asked.
"If you want to, then yes. Do you understand the purpose of this?" Walter asked.
"I don't think all of us understand." He replied.
"If we understand how their bodies work, and how different it is from ours, then we can learn how to effectively hurt them, even without weapons."
Josh said "I see. Well, I'll be leaving now. See you later; I want to see if I can find anybody else that survived."
Tamara, Michael and Josh gave Walter a salute. He returned the salute. They turned around, and left. "They deserve the rest. We all do" He thought.
Walter put on his helmet and accessed his team roster on his HUD. He sent them the orders to meet him in the gym.
"This squad will be nothing like a tyranny or a dictatorship guys. You all have individual minds to rely on. I don't want to hold your hands if I don't need to."
Walter didn't believe in having a whole squad function with the leader as the brains and the rest of the team as arms for the brain. Squads full of individuals that can think for themselves and contribute to the team, instead of relying on the team to hold their hands are more capable of surviving and winning battles.
Maybe he can prevent deaths from his friends and teammates from happening again.
"Not like their deaths was my fault anyways."